Lobotero’s Info Ink

In 2030, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, world “liquids” demand is expected to reach 117.6 million barrels per day. Of this amount, unconventional fuels – synthetic liquids derived from tar sands, shale rock, and biofuels – may provide a total of 10.5 million barrels. That leaves 107.1 million to be supplied by conventional petroleum. But what if global oil output has fallen to 60-70% of that amount by 2030, as projected by many analysts? Under those circumstances, no amount of oil from Alaska or the outer continental shelf will be able to save this country (or the rest of the world) from a catastrophic energy crisis.

Some say that any palliative is worth the expense as we head toward certain disaster. But this is not a logical response. Knowing that the age of petroleum is drawing to a close, it is far better to devote our talents and investment dollars on hastening the arrival of its successor, rather than prolonging the agony of oil’s decline.

At this point, we cannot be absolute certain of the dominant energy source of the post-petroleum era. Will it be the Solar Age or the Biofuels Age or the Hydrogen Age? But we do know that it will revolve around some constellation of renewable, climate-friendly, domestically-produced supplies. From now on, America’s top priority in the energy field must be to explore all potential components of this new energy future and move swiftly to develop those with the greatest promise.

2030 is 22 yrs from now and will the next president truly be the author of a new and more environment friendly energy policy? I am thinking…no they will not…..somehow, something will happen to move this to the back burner….yet again.

“As goes Chevy, so goes America”, an old saying that I do hope is not true.

General Motors Corp. stock closed below $10 per share Wednesday — its lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president, power brakes were new and the Bel Air was the automaker’s hot new car — after dreadful June auto sales led one analyst to write that “bankruptcy is not impossible.”

Even if GM management feels it doesn’t need to borrow the money, doing so probably would ease investor anxiety.

Although bankruptcy could make it easier for GM to shrink its brand and dealer network to the size it truly needs in North America, “for a consumer-product company, it’s a fearful prospect to contemplate because of consumer perceptions,” Phillippi said.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization might help GM become more competitive, he said, but it would have to worry that customers would stop buying its products for fear parts and service wouldn’t be available or that the company wouldn’t survive.

“We believe that the weakness in demand and deteriorating mix through the first half of 2008 are just the beginning of what is shaping up to be a more severe downturn than even the most bearish industry observers expected,” Murphy wrote. “In the wake of a deteriorating economy, a weakening consumer and rising gas prices, we expect industry volumes to decline significantly.

This was a article on the latest decision by the Supreme Court on the 2nd amendment, written on straightrecord.com

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rests much of the 5-4 majority opinion of the court in D.C. v Heller on the alleged right to have the right to one’s defense of one’s self defense. Supposedly, if one has a gun, one can protect oneself against attackers, intruders and all sorts of evil-doers.

We were struck by two factors–how borderline illiterate so many of the gun-nut bloggers are (not just on this issue, but others as well) and how many expressed macho boasts, such as “you’ll have to pry my gun from my dead, cold hands,” aping the John Wayne-type post of the late National Rifle Association figurehead, Charlton Heston.
If anyone were ever in favor of gun control, knowing such people are out there with guns in their hands is justification enough.
But since our mantra is to be informed, we checked out to the best we could what is known about the success of gun possession in fending off various criminals.
The evidence is sparse, and what there is of that is old, but it puts the lie to the claim that personal possession of a gun is an effective defense.

But since our mantra is to be informed, we checked out to the best we could what is known about the success of gun possession in fending off various criminals.
The evidence is sparse, and what there is of that is old, but it puts the lie to the claim that personal possession of a gun is an effective defense.
Although one would presume that a person who uses a gun successfully to repel an intruder or an attacker would then report the incident to the police, if for no other reason than to seek to put the perpetrator in jail.
A cursory search turned up no research, not even U.S. Justice Department tracts based on voluminous federal, state and local crime reports, that compares the claims of self-defense with police reports of such claims.

Another chant of gun nuts is that if guns are taken away from them, only criminals will have guns. Federal statistics show that 340,000 crimes each year involve the theft of firearms, two-thirds of them during household burglaries. It appears it is legitimate gun owners who are supplying the criminals with guns.

Obama’s transformation from opponent to champion of welfare reform is the latest in a series of moves to the center. Since capturing the Democratic nomination, Obama has altered his stances on Social Security taxes, meeting with rogue leaders without preconditions, and the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s, sweeping gun ban.

The shift in Obama’s rhetoric on welfare reform has proceeded in stages. When Clinton was poised to sign welfare reform while running for re-election in 1996, Obama called it “disturbing.” A decade later, as an underdog running for president against Clinton’s wife, he spent 2007 avoiding the subject. By the time Obama emerged as the Democratic frontrunner in the spring of 2008, he began leaving the impression that he was for it all along.

When implementation of welfare reform came before the Illinois state senate in 1997, Obama cited a lack of job training, insufficient oversight, and provisions blocking legal immigrants from receiving benefits as his reasons for opposing a federal welfare overhaul imposing work requirements and time limits.

While campaigning for president in 2007, Obama refused on two occasions to say if he would have signed the same welfare-reform bill approved by the husband of his top rival.

By glossing over his early opposition to welfare reform, Obama is stepping closer to the political mainstream. But by undergoing this transformation only once it became politically convenient, Obama’s critics will charge that he puts calculation ahead of conviction.

Congress is finishing work begun in 2006 to remedy an unintended consequence of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)–the treatment of a form of employee compensation called incentive stock options (ISOs).

The House of Representatives passed legislation in May 2008 as part of the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 (HR 6049) fully restoring the economic incentives and benefits Congress intended for ISOs when it allowed companies to offer them beginning in 1981.

Under AMT, thousands of workers who received ISOs have faced enormous unintended tax liabilities. (See “Taxpayers Cry Foul as AMT Affects Millions of Americans,” Budget & Tax News, May 2007, and “Congress Moves to Fix Tax Penalties Against Incentive Stock Options,” Budget & Tax News, January 2008).

Due to an unintended flaw in the tax code, ISO AMT victims–employees of small and large companies across America–were forced to pay taxes sometimes exceeding 300 percent of their annual salaries, based on phantom “income” they never received. In many cases, families were unable to pay, leading the IRS to seize their houses and savings and garnish their wages.

The ISO correction and relief provision in HR 6049 was based on the AMT Credit Fairness and Relief Act, HR 3861, introduced by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and lead co-sponsor Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), with original co-sponsors Reps. Richard Neal (D-MA) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN).

“The goal of this legislation is to restore a basic sense of fairness to a provision in the tax code that has gone tragically awry,” said Van Hollen in a press statement. “While everyone should pay a just and proportionate amount of tax on money they actually make, no one should lose their homes, savings, and retirement to a wildly disproportionate tax on phantom income they never saw, because our tax laws failed to anticipate the circumstances in which a number of our citizens now find themselves.”

The federal government is subjecting veterans to long delays in obtaining mental health care and medical benefits, but the power to change the system rests with officials and Congress, not the courts, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday in dismissing a lawsuit by veterans’ advocates.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti said veterans’ groups had failed to show a “systemwide crisis” in mental health care that would justify the courts intervening in the workings of the Department of Veterans Affairs. And he said courts lack authority to order the sweeping changes the plaintiffs seek, such as forcing the VA to make quick decisions on whether veterans are eligible for care and ordering the agency to promptly improve suicide prevention programs and mental health care.

You may fly your flag and you may thump your chest proudly, but until we give the veterans the attention they deserve–NO one is patriotic.  This country sent these people into harms way and then turn our backs on them–IT IS PATHETIC AND SICKENING!

Presidential candidate Barak Obama recently met with the boss of GM and they talked about ways to save the auto industry from total collapse.  Here are the ways to save the industry according to a report.

• Provide more support for basic research into new technologies, along with tax credits or other incentives for consumers to buy them once they are available.

• Assist manufacturers in converting factories.

Building new technologies “takes a lot of capital,” Wagoner said. “One of the biggest issues the U.S. industry faces is we have relatively weak balance sheets due to a lot of things … so support in improving the manufacturing base is important.”

Let me see if I have this about right–the government will basically be bailing the industry out for their bad decisions in the pursuit of profit?  Sorry, but they should be held responsible for their bad decisions, as I am held responsible for mine.

I would say that help from the government should be there, but only after they have illustrated that they are truly concerned with the way the industry is going.  That means they come up with a plan and start down the road and then , only then shopuld the government be involved.

But unfortunately, that is not gonna happen, the industry will get massive amounts of cash shoved up their butts by Washington and will go back to making the decisions that have put them in the dire straights they are in now.

Millions of people in the US, and not merely those with the lowest incomes, are being hammered by a combination of job losses, rising prices for basic items such as food and gasoline, and the drop in the value of their homes.

Home prices continued to fall last month, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes, a widely followed measurement. In 20 US metropolitan areas home prices declined in April by the most on record, 15.3 percent from a year earlier, following a 14.3 percent decline in March. The drop in prices has erased gains made since 2004.

The figures for selected major metropolitan areas are staggering. Las Vegas and Miami saw annual price declines of 26.8 percent and 26.7 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, now that the warmer weather is upon us, combined with the growing economic distress, private utility companies are cutting off electricity and natural gas at rates 15 percent higher than last year. There are restrictions on the ability of the utilities to halt service to homes during the winter months.

USA Today reported Tuesday that “utilities are disconnecting many more customers who fall behind on their bills, and even moderate-income households are getting zapped…Totals for some utilities have more than doubled.”

Utility disconnects are up 56 percent for Detroit Edison; more than one in five of its customers were behind in their electric bills in May.

All in all, it’s no wonder then, as the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, that “consumer confidence dropped like a stone in June, and expectations hit an all-time low, according to the latest survey from the Conference Board.” Lynn Franco of the Conference Board told the paper, “Perhaps the silver lining to this otherwise dismal report is that consumer confidence may be nearing a bottom.”

June’s confidence figure, based on a survey of 5,000 households, was the fifth lowest reading ever. Only 11.5 percent of those surveyed said business conditions were good.

One of the most telling social realities, and one with considerable implications, is detailed in the section somewhat blandly entitled, “Heightened Housing Challenges.” The Joint Center study notes that in 2006 nearly 40 million households in the US were at least “moderately cost burdened”—paying more than 30 percent of income on housing—and nearly 18 million “were severely cost burdened (paying more 50 percent)”. The number of severely burdened households “surged by almost four million” from 2001 to 2006, or some 20 to 25 percent.

“The weight of high housing costs falls especially heavily on households in the bottom income quartile. Fully 47 percent of low-income households were severely cost burdened in 2006, compared with 11 percent of lower middle-income households and just 4 percent of upper middle-income households. On average, households with children in the bottom quartile of spenders with severe housing cost burdens have just $257 a month left over for food, $29 for clothing, and $9 for healthcare. With food and energy costs climbing, these households will have less to spend on bare necessities.”

While low-income and minority households have been hard hit, “Affordability problems are edging up the income scale,” the study observes. “A rising number of middle-income homeowners also face cost pressures….For homeowners earning more than the median income, the likelihood of being housing cost burdened nearly doubled between 2001 and 2006.”

The conditions for millions of children are a national disgrace. More than one in six children in the US lives in households paying more than half their incomes for housing. The poorest quarter of American households “spent 32 percent less on food, 56 percent less on clothes, and 79 percent less on healthcare than families with low housing outlays.”

Americans are in dire straits–with the high cost of gas, housing and food–these are essentials not luxuries and there seems to be no relief in sight.  Will the candidates eventually get around to offering real solutions to these problems or will we continue to hear the stuff that does not make sense, it is said to gain votes not solve problems.

When will the American people learn?

In testimony before the US Congress on Monday, James Hansen, a leading climatologist, called heads of major energy companies criminals who should be prosecuted for deliberately spreading false and misleading information about the threat posed by global warming.

Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to mark the 20th anniversary of his initial appearance before Congress in 1988. He generated the first significant public awareness of the issue of global warming by telling the Senate at that time that manmade greenhouse gasses were raising global temperatures.

Since then climate scientists have reached a virtually unanimous consensus that the burning of oil and other fossil fuels results in additional atmospheric carbon dioxide, trapping heat. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased greatly over the last century, and global temperatures are rising as a result.

Hansen decried the extremely limited official goals set for reducing carbon emissions calling them “a recipe for global disaster.” He called for a moratorium on the construction of coal burning power plants and the development of carbon free alternatives to coal and petroleum.

Hansen indicted the energy conglomerates for blocking action on global warming. “Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil fuel companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, just as tobacco companies discredited the link between smoking and cancer. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions about global warming.”

Despite Hansen’s compelling testimony, there are no indications that US policy will change. Since Hansen first appeared before Congress in 1988, neither the Clinton administration nor the administrations of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have passed any major legislation restricting greenhouse gas emissions. There have been 21 coal-fired power plants constructed and US emissions of carbon dioxide have risen by some 18 percent.

The domination of the energy sector by a handful of private monopolies and the subordination of both the Republicans and Democrats to these powerful interests blocks the adoption of any serious measures to deal with the looming catastrophe posed by global warming. These multibillion dollar corporations will not tolerate any measure, no matter how critical for human survival, that impinges on their profits.

Further, any strategy to oppose global warming requires a coordinated international effort. However, energy companies dominate US foreign policy as well, dictating a strategy that seeks to secure world hegemony, including the invasion and occupation of Iraq and other oil rich regions of the world.

Conservative leaders met with Sen. John McCain to urge the Republican presidential contender to talk more about social issues on the stump in order to get conservatives to the voting booths.

“If he doesn’t start talking about the social issues, I don’t see how he can possibly win Ohio,” said Phil Burress, head of Citizens for Community Values, a Christian group advocating family values.

Mr. Burress said he sent a clear message to Sen. McCain, but the senator made no promises he would incorporate conservative voters’ priorities — including opposing abortion, gay marriage and pornography — into his stump speech. At a town hall meeting Thursday afternoon prior to the meeting, Sen. McCain didn’t mention social issues.

This is pretty good advice, John.  You spend too much time throwing barely understandable energy policy out there or you thump your chest like a sex crazed primate on national security.  Look at all the polls!  The people will vote with their wallets this time around and if you have no stands on the issues importasnt to the voter, then you will be a loser and in the largest way.